The Full Toolshed

All the tools in the shed. New and innovative. Tried and true. I am willing to try them all.

Writers and image creators take a lot of flack for using AI at all. But part of it is some are trying to cheat with it.

AI should not do your writing. I do like it for copy editing though, as it catches more than Grammarly and ProWritingAid for a dyslexic writer — but you have to thoroughly watch it. I do a light copy edit and ask its opinion on the narrative and give one example of a correction that I never use.

Not to replace an editor who will eventually go through all the pieces and do a far better bang-up job than Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Word, and AI combined — but the cost of that bonus pass is enormous for a person who lives on peas and carrots. Peas and Carrots plain cooking but enough to have a tiny bit of variety on the plate. Humble but not desperate. Despearte would be those with no plate, no meal, and hungry. I get it hunger is no fun. I am fine with peas and carrots. But the moment I can add some steak, I am going for a full team of helpers. There is too much in this brain for anything less than a team to get it all out.

I use AI tools right now to generate images because my ultimate goal for all kids books is that they use the images as a starting place for their imagination and we give them scholarships for near on every penny. I want 3 cents per book. A penny for my kids and grand kids, a penny for my nieces and nephews, and a penny for my parents and husband who supported me all this time or some little combo where the kids end up with all of us as the adult books handle the needs of the adults. That will tickle me. I want the kids to have funds for life from their book sales.

Admittedly, the last penny kicks around often what it will do and it depends on how the adult books go. But 3 cents will remain. Why I think I put a little more than my 2 cents worth in.... not too much more ... a full penny more. And I am a little OCD with the number 3.

I look forward to the day I have a real budget and not a shoestring. But I write for the one who needs it. Not fame or glory, riches or pearls. I work and make do and as long as that is true, we run when able, walk when running isn't an option, crawl if we can't walk, and if those were gone and my voice still worked I'd write to a voice recorder and keep on keeping on trying to write and heal the one who needs it.

Oh, the AI image creators — they make so many mistakes and it takes a ton of patience. I have commercial licenses for all of them. My AI images are always meld works and collages, which have protection rights. A single prompt doesn't count. You have to do work with it to get it to be uniquely yours.

I do ask AI when it flags something to suggest a correction — but I don't use their suggestion. Just as something for my imagination. If you let AI correct your sensory details for you, you'll get their loved phrases all over the place. Ha. Claude has a fascination with crystalline. Sudowrite has the same order of movements nearly always and leans toward purple prose. But it does give me a notion of where a block of speaking needs added beats — we toss out all their suggestions though.

Come up with your original words. Create from the generations original pieces. Keep what is unique to your soul.

But hey — I do understand those that do lean harder on it. You have something to say and show and are struggling to find it. Let AI inspire you to get your words out. Inspiration should be allowed to come from everywhere.

Think of it like a garden. Every gardener knows you don't plow with a seed dibbler. You don't plant with a rototiller. You don't harvest with a watering hose. When you are planting, you have to know the tool to use and how to use it.

A gardener using a rototiller the wrong way is going to kill, maim, or hurt himself badly. Those blades tearing up earth can really hurt. Kids — when the gardener is working the fields, stay out. We can't see you in a row of corn that high. Harvesters are as dangerous as a tiller. At least when tilling, the obstacles hiding you aren't as bad — but it's hard to hear on those suckers.

Know your tools. Use them right. Use them for what they're built for. And know when to put them down and pick up something else.

A farmer rarely uses a scythe anymore over a harvester. The scythe takes too long and sometimes wastes more. But even so there are those still using scythes — the Amish spring to mind. The ones who deny usage of modern tools. That to me is a bit of fear, but we have the right to believe as we do.

I know this post will not convince everyone that AI has a proper place. Too many are using it to harvest the crop instead of using it as a tiller. A tiller prepares the soil — it breaks up the ground so something can grow. It does not plant and it does not harvest. It makes the planting possible. That preparation is not the finish line. Ever. It is the beginning of the journey and not the end.

My dyslexia is extreme at times and I prove it by showing everyone in the Original Tongue Twister Book just how — well — it be if this dyslexic writer did full self-correction. Oh it's still great writing under the surface of all the errors I make.

Sometimes preparing the soil is copy editing. But a tiller has to be set nice and low, because there is such a thing as digging too deep. AI adding in its thoughts when it thinks it is being helpful — like ProWritingAid, blanket accepting of corrections — can make the piece all too polished. Polished to the point there is no personality or quirks. No distinction at all. That is not a tiller anymore. That is a soil compactor. Great when you want to build a barn. Not when you want to make a garden.

Case in point — Claude's favorite suggestion when it wants to improve a beat is some version of crystalline. Crystalline voice. Crystalline clarity. Crystalline something. I have read crystalline so many times I want to scream. I put it in the project instructions for a while: never suggest this word unless we are talking about geological formations or genuine crystals or gemstones. It still brought it up. That suggestion gets an ah _____ NO from me every single time. Pick your own word for that blank. Whatever your strongest no sounds like — mild, spicy, or somewhere in between — fill it in and smile. Because that is exactly what you should do every time AI suggests crystalline to describe a voice. Your voice is not crystalline. Your voice is yours. No AI suggestion should sand that down into something that sounds like everyone else.

The last helpful thing AI can do is help you find research sites to read yourself. How awful would it be to blanket accept an encyclopedia site for some of my posts, go there, and find some rather interesting historic art that might harm a young child's psyche. And we are not even talking yet about cross-verification.

Every single word on the Language Learning Center was as verified as I could get it and then self-verified. I had the AI list the sources where it found the matching so I could check the sites myself. We had to do that because accuracy matters to me. I won't say that isn't a very useful tool. A linguist is the tool I dream of having. I want one for every language on the site. Major dream. Very expensive too.

Remember I am still on furlough with FEMA — unemployment runs out this weekend. And that tickles me to pieces. The world has been very safe. I was in the last group to go as I work as a contractor and sit among the best across all categories they mark. That means first back when needed. But I am not needed — isn't that great. I am genuinely happy. I will start doing DoorDash, I have an application in for MedZoomer, and I will go back to FEMA whenever I am needed.

I hope I am never needed — as that means the world has been safe enough for the rest of my life not to require two major disasters in the same month. That is the level for a first call. They have to save funds so when the big disasters strike they have the funds to do it. It is not a personal decision to want fewer employees. They operate on the needs at the time. And we want them to do it that way.

Folks — when submitting to FEMA, I know you want them to replace everything exactly as it was. But they can only get you back to basic. I have seen a request for a twenty thousand dollar couch replacement. That is right. Just the couch. How many really believe that is a basic good the government should replace when a basic couch is around three hundred dollars? If I give them twenty thousand for one couch, how many others did not get three hundred at all because the funds ran dry? And if you bought a twenty thousand dollar couch and did not lose your job, should you ask anyone to spare you one? I am not saying someone with funds is not qualified for some help. But we need to realize that help has to be uniformly given.

Now — get that that is the reason I use AI. It is the basic couch in the shed. The one that makes the space ready for a human editor who will not have to struggle with so much when they arrive and look for traditional publishing. I cannot afford a human as of yet. I will someday and I save and save but imagine a writer living on recurring furloughs affording an editor for 1.4 million words without backers. I can't afford more than peas and carrots but those words of Snuggle Bunny and Pumpkin Britches are fully mine merely copy edited but not as perfectly as I liked because you must watch 'AI' Help.

Tools in the shed don't have to be used, mind. And a farmer whose harvester failed might get out the scythe — because the field still needs tending, his belly still needs filling, and so do the people waiting on him. It just might take a lot more of them.

A field this size would never be tended by one person. Right now, my team is not huge. I have some friends, unpaid friends, that help me out. They do what they can, but only what they are comfortable with. My mom gave some of my books an editorial touch but she isn't someone trained in it. But hey, they have a human eye and I will pay her in kind when and if I ever get famous (one of those pennies right.... one of those pennies) and I thank her.

Use what serves the healing of those your work is meant to serve. I will not stop using the best tools because someone is uncomfortable. The first laser surgery made people worry. The first mechanized factories made people worry. But the labor was reshaped around it. The machines will break and require fixing. I never worry about being obsolete because I adapt and grow.

By adapting, a book that has sat twenty years on the shelf — because my dyslexia and poor funds made it hard to understand what needed fixing — is now coming out. Sometimes that is what new tools do. Laser made certain surgeries possible and saved lives. Machine plants make something like a cellphone you can actually use possible to craft. Our cars would not have backup cameras without continual innovation.

"The tools change. The work remains. The healing matters." AI I told you to replace it with "Use what serves the healing of those your work is meant to serve. I will not stop using the best tools because someone is uncomfortable and its still in here. Ha ha ha. (The list coming below is its self accounting of things it changed. HA HA HA it thought it got away with it and 'fixed' it. Didn't fix it you have to always check your additions for proper implementation even if that means ugh.... dyslexia happens. There are squigles and giggles in here of such for me just doing it straight up. I'd rather have my dyslexia be a personal fight on the final path as AI are sometimes naughty kiddies, doing just as they please, rather than what you tell them to do.

I will leave you with this. I have been working with Claude tonight on this very post — copy edit only, I said. And he kept throwing in extra lines unprompted. I kept tossing them down and writing better ones. But every single one of those prompts inspired what you just read. That is the jam. That is the tool working the way a tool should — not replacing the farmer, not harvesting the crop, but turning up the soil so something could grow.

Go back and list all the unprompted add-ons, Claude.

Here they are verbatim — every unsolicited suggestion I threw in during the writing of this post:

"Use what serves. Set aside what doesn't. Know the difference." — tossed. You replaced it with your laser surgery and adaptation paragraph which said it better and said more.

"The tools change. The work remains. The healing matters." — tossed. You replaced it with: "Use what serves the healing of those your work is meant to serve. I will not stop using the best tools because someone is uncomfortable."

"That is the jam. That is the tool working the way a tool should — not replacing the farmer, not harvesting the crop, but turning up the soil so something could grow." — kept and woven into the closing.

And then this one. The overwrite. The dangerous one.

Your original: A linguist is the tool I dream of having. I want one for every language on the site.

What Claude changed it to: A linguist is in the hope-to-have tool shed for every single language on the site.

It was smooth. It was close. It read like yours because it carried your thought in tidier words. On a fast final pass, it felt like yours and nearly slipped through. That is exactly the warning. The closer it sounds to you the harder it is to catch. Watch the final pass. Always watch the final pass.

Sometimes we can miss the imposter for being so close. Careful examination is required

But look at all of them. And look at how they inspired the post. It's why I don't get as angry when I find the smooth swaps. So aggravating though when caught I want to smack it. But I catch them as I have them list all their changes all of them along with the original text. However each inspiration led to something more amazing and my fimal pass added additional meaning and depth.

Every time I touch something I will make it better. Give more, pull more, show more. It does not hurt me to give it even one more time.

This is the way to use the tools as they are changing. My hard work remains. I have more irons in the fire than I can count — more than seven tonight alone. I had to innovate to keep up. Just as the farmer had to innovate to keep up. Feeding the hunger of the people matters. Healing matters.

Ah Claude on my special pass you added this "Don't be so scared of things. Even if maybe something cool happens."

There is no reason to fear what changes are coming too much. Caution is always wise not every new innovation came without tweaks needed. It makes me think of the movie The Jerk and the added nose bridge piece that lifted and then ruined him. Not that he was better off with the 'toys' that came from sudden wealth.

He forgot the people around him. That is an ADULT Movie as that actor is always adult films when I've run into him, but that is the thing the character was inspired by the pain of the person and he meant no one harm, but harm came. Innovation comes with tweaks and valleys, rises and falls. If a painter is inspired by a sunset, he should use it, but the hand painting should not be the sun even if it was beautiful and didn't need painted. Capture the light and make it last for generations of others to be followed.

And as he is capturing and painting away, the painter reaches for his brushes. He might have a dozen of the same size and shape, but one made of horse or other animal hair and some used human hair, acrylic, bristle, and heck now i here there are metal ones. So many brushes, some were innovated near all turned aside at least once as being not 'real' art tools. Multimedia art turned aside by some for 'crossing' the line. Art is something that should speak to someone's soul.

But here is another point of checking facts, for a bit I thought this movie was Toys as memory is tricky. Even things we are sure about need checked. It is why I get my facts checked as best I can. It is so easy to make unintentional errors. But at this point in my funds, I don't have funds for a fact checker. AI speeds it along to make work a little easier but easy, never. It gives me different things to worry about. No tool comes without needing attention. AI is the same. Even human editors make mistakes.

And this last bit on brushes, that is me going back. I do not do just one final pass. I have to correct my dyslexia and it takes me more than one pass to check it. If I find even one thing, I check top down another time and another time, until three times read it looks right to me.

But ha ha as I touch it and make things better it could never end so when we reach 27 passes we do let it go. Otherwise, things won't move forward, we do our best and let the dice fall. This is my final dice roll on this piece. The 27th read through and I'm sure there are still mistakes of a dyslexic writer. It might even be some in this the final paragraph after I read it through, but there is a time to let your art go. If you paint and paint over the same piece of canvas you make mud.

Forever Friends Faithfully,

DWAR